We offer two options. In many races,  each racer pays a registration fee to Racery, with no fee to the company or charity sponsoring the race. In other races, the race sponsor buys pays for racer entries up front. There's no fee on donations in either case. 

No! Race fees are determined only by the duration of the actual race. We encourage you to open registration as far in advance as possible.

Racery's per race fee fee covers all our technology (both fitness and fundraising functionalities), racer bling, racer support, and our advice on best practices based on six years of experience with other fundraising races. See a list of our per racer fees here. In larger prepaid races (tiers here), the fee also covers additional features and service. 

No! If your organization prepays $10,000 in racer fees for a one month charity race, you'll get 1,000 free racer entries AND the various premium features and enhanced branding that go with that level of prepay.

Zero! That’s right, we retain no portion of donations!

Yes! We can configure a race to take a single type of miles (running, swimming, cycling, etc) OR to accept any kind of exercise, using Racery’s minutes-to-miles activity converter. n more inclusive race can include gardening, yoga, unicycling… your call! (We’ve even had races awarding miles for memorizing Bible verses!) 

Using our DIY forms, you can build a race in a matter of minutes. A complex race, with more branding and customization, can take a week to build.

Write team@racery.com and we'll send you a URL where you can pay for a bunch of coupons they can use.

The easiest approach is Racery's custom route builder, which is available for corporate and charity races. Just input up to ten locations (all on the same body of land) and you're done. Sometimes our tool, which relies on Google, balks at especially complex route.

If you plan on creating a complex route, for example one jumping across bodies of water, or making revisions to your route you should build one or more GPX segments and upload them with your race's route management dashboard. The most powerful option for route building is Plotaroute.com. (You can do this without paying for the product.) Watch Plotaroute's explainer videos before you try to build or edit a route.

One you've created a route, export its GPX file, and then upload it to your Racery event using its "route dashboard," which is accessible below your avatar (top right) on Racery.

• Click on the blue cross top right on the route dashboard.
• Click "upload" and upload your GPX file.
• Click Save.
• Now you can add more segments or shuffle the order of the segments you see or, if you want to delete a segment, click on its edit icon, and then click delete, bottom right.

Racery offers two ways to create extra competition and socializing in a race.

Depending on the sponsor's choice, some races have teams:

• Each team has a fixed size and a captain.
• Team members can message each other privately on the race message board.
• Each racer can only belong to one team.
• Depending on the race sponsor, each team can have an avatar on the route, or a team race can display only individual avatars.
• Teams get digital awards for mileage and, in fundraising events, their total donations.
  Most races have groups:
• Anyone can join a group, and each racer can join multiple groups.
• We track each group's total miles as well as its average miles per racer.
• A group doesn't have an avatar or digital awards.
• More on creating or joining a group here.

For races for a company or organization's staffers, we recommend allowing at least two weeks on your side for registration before the race starts. For nonprofits recruiting racers from a larger, less networked pool, we recommend at least one month of open registration before the race starts. 

From what we’ve seen, probably not.

We do not. We focus all our energy on building experiences for racers, making our virtual races as exciting, motivating and social as possible. If you're looking for medals, we recommend Crown Awards. For tee shirts, we recommend supporting tee shirt company that's local to you.  

A virtual race's ideal duration depends on the demographics and competitiveness of the likely participants. While most physical races (5ks, marathons, etc) take place in a single day, most virtual races allow participants to log miles for between one and six weeks. Versus a single day event, increasing the duration and distance allows people to get extra value out of the experience and magnifies the camaraderie and competition (and funds raised!)  Charity races often last one to four weeks, since beyond that duration fundraising tends to flatten out. Company races tend to be longer—some go on for years—since people know each other better and the race can be integrated in company life.

All funds are immediately deposited in the charity's Stripe account. Creating a Stripe account takes two minutes. (Stripe works with hundreds of big companies.) 

While some companies and charities prefer races in which only individuals compete head to head, teams can add an extra layer of fun and competition to a race.

• In addition to individual leaderboards, team races have mileage and (in a charity race) fund raising leaderboards
• Team members can communicate with each other privately on the messageboard
• Each team has its own leaderboard and activity feed, adding intimacy to a big race
• Every team receives awards for completing the route and total mileage and (in a charity race) funds raised
  The one small downside to a virtual race with teams: we recommend only displaying team avatars, so the route doesn't get too cluttered.

If your race's entries are >$1250, we can invoice your company or nonprofit. For smaller amounts, just add /bulkbuy at the end of the virtual race's URL. So, for example, www.racery.com/r/race-name/bulkbuy

Racery's classic virtual race is usually one to six weeks long (though we've got some that have been going on for years.)  Racers their miles (in many races, minutes of exercise can also be logged also)  based on the honor system. The leader board is ranked by which person (or team) has gone the furthest, and when the race distance is completed, a digital award is given with each person (or teams) finishing position. Even when the distance is completed, racers (or teams) can loop the route, continuing to compete on "ultra" leader boards and trying to rack up as many miles as possible during the race's total duration.

A Racery virtual 5k is only for runners and walkers. It's much shorter, lasting 1 to 7 days. Racers track their time and distance using Racery's Apple or Android app. The race's leader board is ranked by each racer's 5k time. In a 7 day event, racers can race multiple times, with only each racer's best time displaying on the leader board for times. A second leader board (and set of awards) displays total miles run by each participant during the race. Teams can also compete, both for shortest total time and longest total miles.

Most virtual races are being produced by the providers of traditional road races. They provide a leaderboard and medal based on a single run and that's it.

In contrast, Racery has spent the last six years building robust, multi day experiences packed with multiple social and fitness nudges that keep racers motivated and entertained.

We get this question a lot! We can configure a race to take a single type of miles (running, swimming, cycling, etc) OR to accept any kind of exercise, using Racery’s minutes-to-miles activity converter. An more inclusive race can include gardening, yoga, unicycling… your call! (We’ve even had races awarding miles for memorized Bible verses!) 

Yes! Relying on industry leader Strava as our bridge and data filter, we can integrate running, walking, cycling and swimming from devices including Fitbit, Garmin and iWatches. This is available on a per race basis at the discretion of the sponsor. You can sync running miles, walking miles, swimming minutes and cycling minutes. As with all other Racery conversions, in order to keep the event effort based, a swimmer's distance is multiplied based on effort and actual cycling miles are reduced accordingly.

FWIW, we generally discourage synching. We've got five main reasons:

• Research shows that actively logging physical activity creates habit reinforcement and positive psychological benefits that are not triggered by passive logging.
• Wearables sometimes fail to sync, creating headaches for racers, race sponsors and Racery.
• While Racery events celebrate intentional exercise, many wearables track all steps or exercise. This creates an uneven playing field, giving people wearing gadgets a 20-50% advantage because of incidental steps.
• Wearables create a false sense of objectivity, when in fact, the reports of two devices, say a Fitbit and an iWatch, may vary by up to 20% for the same workout. (One researcher found that GPS-based devices underestimated distance by more than 50% on a curvy, wooded route.)

Stripe is the world's leading online credit card processor. Connecting your charity's Stripe account to the Racery race means your portion of the registration and 100% of donations are immediately credited to your Stripe account. We never touch your racers' credit cards or cash. Whew! (BTW, we've tested other payment processors like WorldPay and Paypal, and we found that Stripe is far superior, both in terms of how it integrates with races and racers' experiences.)

Stripe's evaluation of your account's risk determines when it forwards the money to your bank account. For new accounts, this usually happens within 1-2 weeks. After that, payments speed up.

While we've done a number of events with ~5,000 racers, our biggest race to date had 10,000 racers on ~800 teams competing simultaneously logging miles. Ironically, in hosting an event of that size, server loads are the lesser challenge; it takes years of work and steady feedback to create a UX that keeps an event of that size intimate and meaningful for participants.

Absolutely! Just create a race and then let us know what currency you'd like to use. 

Nope. We’ve never seen this work as well. Stick to email blasts and posts on social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram where people can tag each other.

Because your race will be connected to a Stripe account, the funds will be credited to your Stripe account immediately. Go here and here for information about how frequently Stripe sweeps funds to your bank account.

Unfortunately, we've found that some races with fee splits, whether for charity or a small business, invest lots of time in asking basic questions, but don't follow through on launching a successful race. This prepay helps defray our costs and ensures the the sponsor will diligently test our software and follow-through to launching its race. (If you've already used Racery's DIY race-building tool to do a test race and connected it to your Stripe account without Racery's assistance, the prepay minimum likely does not apply.)

Racery relies on Stripe for processing credit card payments for registrations and donations. In a charity race, Stripe fees (published here) are deducted from each donation and the full entry fee. Racery itself charges $0 on all donations.

Yes. When joining a race, new racers need to either join a team or start a new team. To help solo racers find a home, we recommend you use the team management dashboard to create some 'rando' teams (funsters1, funsters2, etc) and then promote these, by name, as you're promoting the race.

Yes! You can do this in the route management dashboard. Note that the distance on everyone's bib will change, but racers can find an updated version of the big on their bio pages.

Yes! As long as Racery's per racer fee is covered, either by prepayment or the racer's entry fee, you can set the fee at any level desired. (Here's a blog post that explains how sometimes the entry fee lower sometimes boosts total funds raised.)

Yes. If you need to change the duration of a race you've built, just write team@racery.com with specifics. We'll also change Racery's per racer fee (fees here) to fit the race's new duration.

No! Our fees are fixed per race.

In most races, we send emails to welcome the racer, remind the racer that the race is starting, plus daily reminders to log miles. In longer races, we also send emails noting when racers or teams pass each other. When the race concludes, we send an email with the racer's award. If you'd like to experience all these emails in context, please create and test a free trial race! Sponsors of larger races can select which emails go out and edit some of the emails.

The exact time a race starts and ends is determined by each race's sponsor. Each race either runs on EST (for example, with everyone starting at noon EST) or in each participant's local time zone (for example with each racer starting to log at noon in their time zone.)  In the latter case, all logging ceases based on the racer's local time zone. There's an added twist in a charity race, in which fundraising ceases at the end time based on EST.